Haircuts in, hijinx out for Sox CHICAGO -- Mark Buehrle...

April 18, 2006

Haircuts in, hijinx out for Sox CHICAGO -- Mark Buehrle was told to stop doing belly flops and slides on the tarp during rain delays. A.J. Pierzynski and Joe Crede were ordered to get a trim. What, are those fun-loving World Series winning White Sox cracking down? Not really. General manager Ken Williams doesn't want Buehrle to get hurt and threatened to fine him if he repeated his slip-and-slide performance from Sunday's rain-delayed win over Toronto. Pierzynski and Crede got the word from owner Jerry Reinsdorf -- relayed to them by Williams -- that he'd like a neater appearance. Both have long blond hair sticking out from their caps, a style Crede started last season when the team was winning or he was hitting well. "Jerry Reinsdorf asked me to tell them to get a haircut and look more presentable. So I asked them to get a haircut and look more presentable," Williams said Monday. "Rules are rules and you got to follow them," Crede said, adding he'd never gotten a haircut previously in the city of Chicago. He did have a trim this spring in Arizona. "If you got to cut it, you got to cut it," he said. Pierzynski, who dabbled in some professional wrestling promotion in the offseason, said he already had an appointment Thursday to get a haircut when Williams approached him with Reinsdorf's request. He might have an opportunity, he says, to have his locks trimmed as part of another promotion to raise money for charity. "Joe's been hitting the ball pretty good. I think he should keep his. But me, I always let my hair grow every winter. I always get it cut April or May. To me I'm just too lazy in the offseason to go get it cut, so I let it go," Pierzynski said Monday. Manager Ozzie Guillen said the hair rules are not his, but ones set down by Reinsdorf many years ago. "This rule has been here since I got here and was playing. Neat haircuts. He's not saying you got to be bald," Guillen said. "You got to go with his rule." Buehrle thoroughly enjoys putting on a show for fans during rain delays and the White Sox don't want to their personable left-hander to change his personality. They don't want him blowing out a knee, either. "He needs to find another hobby," Williams had said on Sunday.